


felt you warm and near

by cashewdani



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M, Pregnancy, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-25
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-22 10:15:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/608715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has to ask, “So do you think we’ll be able to teach our kids what love is?” even though they just got married today.</p>
            </blockquote>





	felt you warm and near

**Author's Note:**

  * For [perfectlystill](https://archiveofourown.org/users/perfectlystill/gifts).



> So, I tried to upload this last night, but the site was too crowded. I hope that it's late is okay. Merry Christmas!!

Lying under the skylight in Burly’s parents’ lake house, staring up at the place she’s shocked to see stars, even out here in the middle of nowhere, she feels the first prick of dread of their marriage. “Do you think we made a mistake?”

“No,” he says, nuzzling against her ribcage, his beard threatening to rub her raw. “Do you?”

“I don’t know.” And that’s the real problem. That she doesn’t know.

“When I was in kindergarten, my teacher was getting married, and she had us all tell her what it meant to be married and put them together in a list and you know what mine said?”

“What?”

“Being married means you love someone so much you sleep with them instead of a toy.” It’s so sweet and childlike that she smiles in spite of of herself.

Until she realizes, “Wait, how many times over in your life have you been married then?”

“No, see, that’s only the part she wrote down because I went on after that but she said we were only allowed one sentence. But the real thing is being married means you love someone so much you sleep with them instead of a toy and they make you laugh when things are supposed to be serious and help you with stuff you can’t do yourself and you want to have kids together to teach them what love is.” He moves his hand delicately over her stomach while he’s speaking.

“How do you remember that?”

“Because I told the whole thing to my mom and she cried, and then helped me write it all down.”

“But you were what? Five?”

“Six. I still believe it though.”

She has to ask, “So do you think we’ll be able to teach our kids what love is?” even though they just got hitched.

“Oh yeah, babe. Definitely.”

And then things are scary and real again and she remembers _we got married on a whim today_ , and says, “We couldn’t take care of a kid. We would probably definitely in fact kill a kid.”

“Yeah, I know.” His hand splaying so large over her belly button, it’s almost like she can’t see anything else. “But we’ll figure it out. Like everything else.”

April nods and sighs and guesses they will.

&&&

Leslie made them all come and have a pregnancy test party at her house one weekend that Ben was out of town visiting his mother. It was a weird invite to receive.

“Do you actually think you’re pregnant?” Ann asks her, again, while Leslie is passing out boxes of EPT on a serving platter, because Leslie has been really good at dodging that question.

“I wasn’t one of those adventurous girls in high school who took pregnancy tests in the girls bathroom before gym, and I just wanted to experience what that might be like with my lady friends.”

“Did anyone ever do that?” April asks the room at large, but everyone is too busy reading the directions to answer her.

Donna refuses to go first, and she keeps telling Leslie that if this is one of those tempting fate things that she’d rather just put all the good will in the room towards the future Wyatt offspring than anything she could be baking in her own oven. Ann has apparently taken four previous pregnancy tests in her life because her cycle isn’t regular, and after about half a sentence of that, April just picks up her box and heads for the bathroom.

She’s never intentionally peed on something before, that’s what she’s thinking about.

As soon as she opens the door, Leslie is reaching for the pregnancy test and laying it down on a napkin that has her name underneath done in calligraphy.

Leslie’s somehow forced the other ladies into taking their own tests, April’s a little upset she didn’t get to find out how, so she just eats some Babybell cheeses while they’re in the bathroom. Leslie keeps warning them that they’ll all look together or it’ll ruin the magic of this moment.

And finally, after it takes Ann a lifetime to pee, Leslie has them pull names from a hat to see whose pregnancy test they’re going to get to reveal. This is probably the worst party she’s ever been to.

“Well, Donna, you’re not pregnant. Hope you hadn’t already picked out names,” April tells her, and Donna has a little celebration during which she thanks God at least three times. “And what about me, Ann? Am I going to have to register at Baby Gap?”

“Um, April, maybe you want to sit down.”

“Come on, stop joking.”

“Wait, is someone actually pregnant at my pregnancy test party?!” Leslie shrieks, and April really can’t with that right now.

“Show me the test,” April demands, forcefully, and Ann passes it to her, and yep, that does not look like Donna’s. “Oh shit,” she says, and Leslie’s crying and April really wanted to be able to rent a car before she sold away her life as she knew it.

&&&

She tells Andy when he comes to pick her up, as women all much better suited to be mothers look on.

He whoops and hollers and swings her around like she weighs nothing. She loves him but she’s never been more uneasy.

“You’re going to be a dad!” Leslie enthusiastically shares like they haven’t all put these things together and April can’t imagine someone calling her mom, oh God, she’s going to be someone’s mother. She’s going to need to cut her hair.

The whole car ride home he keeps a hand on her stomach, babbling away about how awesome it’s going to be to have a little dude around, and April just keeps quiet, thinking of their wedding night, and the similarities she thought she’d have years to forget about.

&&&

The next morning, Andy brings her breakfast in bed, which means a bowl of cereal with the few drops of milk they had left in the fridge. He tells her he’s going to get her orange juice and vitamins and that lotion that will make her skin not look super gross and that all she’s supposed to do is rest.

But while he’s out, she makes an appointment with the OB/GYN that Ann recommended and reads enough horror stories on the internet about all the things that can go wrong with your pregnancy that she’s sure she’s never going to be able to have sex again.

“What if our baby doesn’t have a face because I smelled second hand smoke last week?” is the first thing she says to him when he walks in the door. “I’m not old enough to handle something like that! How did this happen?”

“I think you know how this happened.” He kisses her forehead. “And, I think most kids have faces.”

“We were careful though, weren’t we?”

“Look, I told you this about babies, and the cable, and that family of probably rats that’s living in the bush out back, we will figure it out.”

“But aren’t there people who already have it figured out who become parents?”

“Yeah, but where’s the fun in that?”

&&&

April avoids morning sickness and doesn’t gain much weight at all, and Andy takes care of telling Ron she’s pregnant, so she’s spared that embarrassment. He just pats her on the shoulder and reminds her to eat plenty of red meat, keep her blood good. She does cry about that in the bathroom for almost a half hour, but that’s the hormones.

She’s a little more tired and she’s relying a lot more on her leggings than her jeans, but the doctor tells her everything seems to be moving along exactly as it’s supposed to.

Andy writes a lot of songs and sings them into her bellybutton and during his rendition of “Baby, You’re My Baby”, that’s the first time their fetus moves, a little flutter of bubbles somewhere near her ribcage.

“Do that again,” she says, and he repeats the chorus, but then she takes his hands off the frets and makes him wait and feel what she just felt.

“You have a person inside of you!” he says, and she laughs and laughs, laying on their bed, enjoying a rare moment that doesn’t make her terrified.

&&&

They throw her a baby shower at work, and she cries in front of all of them even though it’s one of the least proud moments of her life. But, she just can’t help it, as she looks around at all the gifts, and cards, and they bought them their stroller, and their car seat and she knows how much those things cost, she had at least two panic attacks about how expensive they were. She doesn’t even care that Leslie keeps talking about the miracle of life or that Tom got her baby a pimp cup.

Andy put his arms around her from behind and kisses her temple, and she’s just crying and thanking everyone.

&&&

Her water breaks while they’re at a dinner party at Ann’s house, which is convenient, because there’s someone there to tell them what to do. April’s pretty sure that had this happened at home, she and Andy would have just stared at the puddle for a really long time.

She’s been having contractions for a few weeks now, just minor ones, but that Andy would monitor with his hands on her belly, feeling the muscles contract and grow taut, timing them on the stopwatch Chris had given him when he started running. She’d drink more water, stay off her feet, and they’d go away. And part of her just kind of thought it would go on like that forever. Her back will hurt and her stomach will continue to stretch, but this will be it. This is just the way things are now.

But then there, in Ann’s dining room, this next new thing happens, every day for 38 weeks, new things keep happening.

Ben is sent to get her bags, which Leslie had packed three weeks ago, and Ann offers to drive so Andy can sit in the back with April, and Tom insists on taking a million pictures on his phone from the passenger seat.

Andy looks at her, his hands and his watch monitoring what’s going on, and reassuringly reminds her, “You’re going to be great at this. We’re going to pull this off.”

April tries to breathe and ignore that she’s 23.

&&&

Baby Boy Dwyer comes into the world wailing and dark haired and the moment that he’s laid on her chest, April knows she has never understood the word love before.

She puts him up against her face, and he’s so small even though he felt enormous a few hours ago when he was getting ready to be here, right now. Andy leans down, all their faces touching, and they’re crying and happy and April forgets to be scared.


End file.
